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Industry & Manufacturing

The Museum's collections document centuries of remarkable changes in products, manufacturing processes, and the role of industry in American life. In the bargain, they preserve artifacts of great ingenuity, intricacy, and sometimes beauty.

The carding and spinning machinery built by Samuel Slater about 1790 helped establish the New England textile industry. Nylon-manufacturing machinery in the collections helped remake the same industry more than a century later. Machine tools from the 1850s are joined by a machine that produces computer chips. Thousands of patent models document the creativity of American innovators over more than 200 years.

The collections reach far beyond tools and machines. Some 460 episodes of the television series Industry on Parade celebrate American industry in the 1950s. Numerous photographic collections are a reminder of the scale and even the glamour of American industry.

These tool checks (or chits) were used to check out tools from the tool locker at Ford’s Rouge River manufacturing plant. The number on the chit matched an employee's badge number, in this case X6550 (for the badge see 2013.0323.01). Once the chit was traded for a tool, the employee was responsible for it until the tool was returned for the chit. The triangular brass chit reads “ROUGE/FORD/X6560” with a hole in the top to hang on the tool’s hook.

These tool checks (or chits) were used to check out tools from the tool locker at Ford’s Rouge River manufacturing plant. The number on the chit matched an employee's badge number, in this case X6550 (for the badge see 2013.0323.01). Once the chit was traded for a tool, the employee was responsible for it until the tool was returned for the chit. The triangular brass chit reads “ROUGE/FORD/X6560” with a hole in the top to hang on the tool’s hook.

The shuttle and bobbin were integral parts of weaving on a loom. The bobbin carried the weft or filling yarns, which unspooled and interlaced with the warp yarns (stretched on the loom) to make the cloth as the weaver passed the shuttle from side to side, hand to hand. Until the invention of the flying shuttle in 1733, most cloth was only as wide as a weaver could comfortably reach. The new shuttle made it possible to weave wider fabrics, and to weave more quickly. This set the stage for the invention of the power loom, adopted widely in the new American textile mills. By the 1830s textile mills were a major source of employment for young women, a trend which continued through the 20th century. This shuttle and bobbin, for a power loom, were used in the donor’s father’s mill in about 1870.

This is a trading post booth number 13 from the New York Stock Exchange built in 1930. Trading was conducted in front of posts connected to the stock ticker by pneumatic tubes. Floor brokers buy and sell shares, attempting to get their customers the best price. Each stock is represented by a specialist who facilitates deals between brokers attempting to buy and those attempting to sell. The trading posts are where the specialists are located, where they serve as auctioneers for the sale, while clerks wait at the trading post until deals are completed and trades are reported.

Dr. Felix Zandman, inventor and founder of Vishay Intertechnology Inc., sketched this idea for a Power Metal Strip Resistor on a napkin at the Husker Steak House in Columbus, Nebraska in 1996. The Vishay Power Metal Strip translates the electrical current in a circuit to a voltage that can easily be monitored and tracked. Zandman learned trigonometry and physics from his uncle while hiding from the Nazis in German-occupied Poland. After immigrating to the United States, he formed Vishay Intertechnology, Inc. in 1962 to help manufacture his inventions.

Esmeralda Bordales was an illegal immigrant working for S&K Fashion, a small apparel manufacturing operation in the Los Angeles garment district. Although her pay stub indicates that she worked 40 hours and received $ 155.30 neither are probably true. Sweatshop workers toil long hours and are almost always paid by the piece.

On August 2, 1995, police officers raided a fenced compound of seven apartments in El Monte, California. They arrested eight operators of a clandestine garment sweatshop and freed 72 illegal Thai immigrants who had been forced to sew in virtual captivity. Authorities also raided the front shop where Esmerelda worked. The 50 to 80 Latina employees in the front shop provided the theoretical source of garment production when representatives from retailers and manufacturers came to inspect facilities and the merchandise they ordered. However, even this shop was in violation of wage and hour codes. Workers, mostly women, finished the garments, put them on hangers, and added tags in preparation for delivery to stores and manufacturers.

This is a pamphlet for the organization Verité. Verité is a nonprofit workplace rights organization with a contract monitoring service, was set up to ensure that contractors abide by manufacturer and retailers’ codes of conduct. Whether these inspections should be performed by manufacturers’ representatives or by independent monitors remains controversial.

Offshore production provided the opportunity for large cost savings but at the same time presented new problems of control. Many large department stores and retail chains lower their costs by directly contracting the production of products (especially clothes) that they sell under their own private labels. These huge orders are too attractive to refuse but too large for any one contractor to fill, so portions are subcontracted out to other shops. Sweatshop abuses often occur in poorly supervised contract shops. Manufacturers and retailers who worried about poor conditions in subcontractors’ factories issued codes of conduct. Enforcement was uneven.

Levi Strauss & Co. pioneered supplier workplace codes of conduct with its Terms of Engagement in 1991. This pamphlet was published in English. Levi’s commitment to workplace responsibility was tested in 1992 when a news report revealed that a supplier in Saipan was abusing its workforce. Mostly immigrants, the workers were working as much as eleven-hours a day, seven days a week, for as little as $1.65 an hour with no overtime pay (the minimum wage in Saipan was $2.15 an hour). The story was especially embarrassing because the Northern Mariana Islands, a protectorate of the United States, was allowed to label the goods Made in the USA. Levi’s canceled their contract.

This lever-top twelve-ounce Coca-Cola Classic can was produced around 1999. The Coca-Cola Company released Coke Classic in 1985, eleven weeks after the launch of New Coke. Coke Classic was introduced in response to the fierce media and consumer backlash against New Coke, out of fear that the new formula would replace the familiar taste. The company’s return to the original formula made headlines in the news. Coke Classic, clearly labeled “Coke Classic Original Formula,” began to sell better than the first Coca-Cola brand and improved sales into the 1990s.

This controversy renewed recognition within the company of the attachment and loyalty that consumers had to the original brand. “Coca-Cola” had become more than the name of an individual beverage, and the company designated it as the name of a “megabrand” representing their entire line of soft drinks. Coca-Cola is the most widely recognized brand in the world. In 2013 63 percent of its $46.7 billion in sales came from over 200 countries around the world. To maintain its brand awareness, the company spent $3.3 billion on advertising.

From 1984 to 1986, Landor Associates was enlisted to create a consistent design for all Coca-Cola packaging, setting a visual standard for the company and assisting its establishment as a global megabrand. The story behind Coke Classic and the establishment of the megabrand represents the tensions involved in maintaining the weight of historic value and product integrity, while being an institution that is flexible to change.

The Coca-Cola Company was founded in 1886 by an American pharmacist, and began its international distribution in the 1920s. Since then Coca-Cola has expanded its operations to more than 200 countries worldwide. Its marketing strategies and packaging innovations have helped to establish the popularity of cola drinks in the soft drink industry.

Global trade became increasingly important but can sometimes result in problems. This chipped and scratched paperweight is an icon of globalism gone wrong. It was recovered from the debris of the World Trade Center following the attacks on September 11, 2001. While the terrorists sought to destroy the Trade Center as a symbolic attack on American Capitalism, in fact the glass paper weight survived. Chipped and damaged, the paperweight, like American business, rose from the ashes of September 11 to carry on.